English FA Show Sepp’s Suggestion the Red Card

You thought the debate about Martin Taylor’s punishment for his tackle on Eduardo was over? Think again. FIFA were recently sniffing around the case, with chief sniffer himself Sepp Blatter demanding to see Taylor’s disciplinary file. He also delegated some sniffing to FIFA’s disciplinary chief Marcel Mathier, and after filling their nostrils FIFA came back to the English FA and recommended lengthening Taylor’s three match ban.

And – incredibly for an organization that ritualistically bows and scrapes to any FIFA demand in the hope of one day maybe being rewarded with World Cup hosting duties – the English FA have said no.

The FA argue that there was no clear evidence of intent to warrant anything more than the usual three match ban for dangerous play, and also that they’re not keen to change the disciplinary procedure midseason.

FIFA are clearly out to clamp down on dangerous tackles. Which is a noble enough endeavour – dangerous tackles are a bad thing, otherwise they wouldn’t be called dangerous tackles – but it’s not very fair or very useful to do so by focusing all their powers on making an example out of one clumsy Birmingham City defender. That’s not clamping down on dangerous tackles, that’s just looking like you’re clamping down on dangerous tackles.

So well done to the FA for finally growing some balls.

And the good news is that the FA have requested to sit down with FIFA at the end of the season and discuss the whole dangerous tackles thing properly. And hopefully do something about it. Which I’d argue is a much more productive approach than pretending the problem begins and ends with Martin Taylor.

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Category: World Football